My Worst Opinion
One way I quality control the content of these missives is by sending them out to the Permanent Equity team before they ever get published. And so I did that with a short piece that riffed on a joke we have here in the office that we should just reorg into two teams: Numbers and Feelings. Because those are usually what our challenges boil down to: Numbers and Feelings.
Despite it being a decent joke, was the piece a little light? Sure… So I wasn’t surprised when I received an email back from Emily that read “Not your best.”
But what was surprising was that she had inadvertently cc’d the entire rest of the company (good times!).
I think Emily felt a little sheepish that her publicly-delivered feedback wasn’t more constructive, but ultimately it’s all good. I wrote previously that one of the most valuable things someone can do for you is tell you you’re wrong and be right. A variant on that is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself is do something poorly, realize it, and make it better. That’s because my experience is that iteration makes things exponentially better. But in order for this to happen you need to do something poorly – and not good enough that you never iterate – the first time.
In other words, I’m glad I wrote a bad piece and that Emily told me it was bad and that I agreed with her because it gave me the chance to write a better one.
Somewhat related is a post Johnny shared that Jason Fried (the “Co-founder & (sometimes) CEO of 37signals”) published on LinkedIn. In it Jason wrote that he’d come to believe that Founder & CEO is an “impossible title” because a founder’s job is to “injecting risk” into a business whereas a CEO’s job is reducing risk.
Just like numbers and feelings, that's an interesting people paradigm! In your role as a professional or parent or spouse or coach are you someone who injects risk into situations or reduces it? Because the thing is, situations need both.
I’ve talked a lot about risk in this space. About how it can be high risk to be low risk, about what different risks look and feel like, and about how to (maybe) win the game Risk by creating optionality and getting rapid payback or waiting for a big payday.
The reason that risk is on my mind so much is that everything is risk because nothing is for certain. For example, it’s risky to send out an email to the world because people might not like it. But it’s even riskier not to because then you’ll never make new friends.
Or it’s risky to make long-dated illiquid investments but it’s even riskier not to because then it’s guaranteed that inflation will erode the purchasing power of your life’s savings.
And it’s risky to tell the President and CIO of the place you work that something wasn’t his best, but it’s even riskier not to because if you don’t maybe no one else will!
It’s fairly well-accepted that if a situation feels risky, it’s important to try to make it more comfortable. What’s less accepted is that if a situation feels comfortable, you should work to risk it up. But that’s absolutely what you should do, if anything is ever going to get better.
– By Tim Hanson